How to Create, Maintain and Use a Testing Roadmap
A maintained testing roadmap should help you achieve high testing cadence, define actionable next steps and communicate insights to the relevant stakeholders.
Achieving Testing Cadence While Shining Light on Insights & Follow-Up Actions
I’ve seen marketing teams uncover, what should be, extremely valuable insights on their audience or messaging. But I’ve seen the same teams shoot themselves in the foot. Because even though they uncovered something valuable, the true ROI was only 0.1% of its full potential. This happens if an insight isn’t communicated to relevant teams or acted on.
In my last article, I covered the different types of insights you can get with performance marketing tests. For this article, we will discuss the process of organising those tests & insights in a testing roadmap.
A well-organised and maintained testing roadmap should help you achieve three things at once: 1) High testing cadence, 2) Actionable next steps, 3) Easily understandable insights for the organisation.
What is a Testing Roadmap, and Why is it Important for Marketers?
A structured, maintenance database
A testing roadmap is a structured “database” of various tests, structured according to your team or section (e.g., product marketing, growth marketing, lifecycle, product, paid media, onboarding).
It keeps everyone aligned, maintains the testing cadence, and ultimately, it helps to never lose sight of insights and next steps. Together, these things help build trust from the organisation.
Besides keeping your team on the same page, a testing roadmap plays a crucial role in documentation—tracking your trials, successes, and lessons learned along the way. The importance of maintaining a comprehensive record of your tests can't be overstated. It's like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that can guide future marketing strategies. Even tests from years ago can still provide value, so you don’t want to lose them with employee churn.
What tool to use to create the roadmap
Creating a roadmap can be as simple as a well-structured spreadsheet on Google Sheets or a complex layout on Miro, Notion, or Jira. I personally love Notion database, but what’s important is that the roadmap is easily accessible by the whole team. So pick a tool people use on their day-to-day.
What To Include in a Testing Roadmap?
Usually, these are the elements I include in a testing roadmap:
While some fields like test name, hypothesis, methodology are mandatory, others may be optional, depending on your specific context.
And, a little note: I would severely recommend against running any tests without defining your hypothesis and methodology beforehand. It could be that you’re unable to assess the results because your set-up was incorrect or you’re missing the necessary metrics. If you want more information on how to set up your hypothesis, check out this article by
.The Three Steps For Crafting a Roadmap
Here are the steps I take to craft a roadmap:
Step 1: Create Format and Source Ideas
A roadmap begins with the owner. As the one who knows your campaign's ins and outs, you're best suited to create the format that aligns with your marketing strategy.
Once the format is done, you can start listing and centralising different tests ideas & hypotheses. The same hypothesis can be validated with multiple tests.
Step 2: Set Metrics, Methodology and Prioritise on Impact
Paid media usually focuses on two key metrics: scale (X budget to spend) and efficiency (CAC payback period). Understanding which metrics are most important in your context and how they tie into your overall business goals is crucial for effective prioritization. And as you're prioritizing, always consider the potential impact a test could have.
Step 3: Align with Stakeholders, Set Timeline and Test Markets/Campaigns
Once you have a list of tests and hypotheses, it's time to get everyone on the same page. Communicate with stakeholders, establish a timeline, and decide on the markets and campaigns where the tests will run. This step also involves allocating resources where necessary.
Putting the Testing Roadmap Into Action
The real game begins when you start putting the testing roadmap into action. It's not just about running the tests, but ensuring they are implemented correctly and monitored effectively. Keep the roadmap updated with the status of each test (is it completed?), results, any follow-up tests, and where the test is currently running.
It’s crucial to remember that a testing roadmap is not just for the marketers. To reach the full potential of testing, the relevant insights need to be communicated to your product and sales teams.
Coming up: performance marketing and marketing analytics audits
I hope you enjoyed reading this! Next month, I’ll be publishing new articles on how to do performance marketing and marketing analytics audits. If you’re interested in those, subscribe below to receive them:
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